Quick Links - Poets.org

follow poets.org

Search form

The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

poetic forms

John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, on July 28, 1927. He was the author of more than twenty books of poetry, including Breezeway (Ecco, 2015); Quick Question (Ecco, 2012); Planisphere (HarperCollins, 2009); A Worldly Country (Ecco, 2007); Where Shall I Wander (HarperCollins, 2005); Chinese Whispers (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002); Your Name Here (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000); Girls on the Run: A Poem (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999); Wakefulness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998); Can You Hear, Bird (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995); And the Stars Were Shining (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994); Hotel Lautrémont (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992); Flow Chart (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991); and April Galleons (Penguin, 1987).

During his career, Ashbery received nearly every major American award for poetry. His collection A Wave (Viking, 1984) won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (Viking, 1975) received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award; and Some Trees (Yale University Press, 1956) was selected by W. H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series.

He also published Collected French Translations: Poetry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014); Collected French Translations: Prose (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014); Other Traditions: the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (Harvard University Press, 2000); Reported Sightings (Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), a book of art criticism; a collection of plays; a novel, A Nest of Ninnies (Dutton, 1969), with James Schuyler; and edited The Best American Poetry 1988.

Ashbery served as the poet laureate of New York State from 2001 to 2003. He was the first English-language poet to win the Grand Prix de Biennales Internationales de Poésie (Brussels), and also received the Bollingen Prize, the English Speaking Union Prize, the Feltrinelli Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, two Ingram Merrill Foundation grants, the MLA Common Wealth Award in Literature, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize, the Frank O'Hara Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Fulbright Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Ashbery was the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr., Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. He divided his time between New York City and Hudson, New York. He died on September 3, 2017.

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape

The first of the undecoded messages read: "Popeye sits
in thunder,
Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment,
From livid curtain's hue, a tangram emerges: a country."
Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch: "How
pleasant
To spend one's vacation en la casa de Popeye," she
scratched
Her cleft chin's solitary hair. She remembered spinach
And was going to ask Wimpy if he had bought any spinach.
"M'love," he intercepted, "the plains are decked out
in thunder
Today, and it shall be as you wish." He scratched
The part of his head under his hat. The apartment
Seemed to grow smaller. "But what if no pleasant
Inspiration plunge us now to the stars? For this is my
country."
Suddenly they remembered how it was cheaper in the country.
Wimpy was thoughtfully cutting open a number 2 can of spinach
When the door opened and Swee'pea crept in. "How pleasant!"
But Swee'pea looked morose. A note was pinned to his bib.
"Thunder
And tears are unavailing," it read. "Henceforth shall
Popeye's apartment
Be but remembered space, toxic or salubrious, whole or
scratched."
Olive came hurtling through the window; its geraniums scratched
Her long thigh. "I have news!" she gasped. "Popeye, forced as
you know to flee the country
One musty gusty evening, by the schemes of his wizened,
duplicate father, jealous of the apartment
And all that it contains, myself and spinach
In particular, heaves bolts of loving thunder
At his own astonished becoming, rupturing the pleasant
Arpeggio of our years. No more shall pleasant
Rays of the sun refresh your sense of growing old, nor the
scratched
Tree-trunks and mossy foliage, only immaculate darkness and
thunder."
She grabbed Swee'pea. "I'm taking the brat to the country."
"But you can't do that—he hasn't even finished his spinach,"
Urged the Sea Hag, looking fearfully around at the apartment.
But Olive was already out of earshot. Now the apartment
Succumbed to a strange new hush. "Actually it's quite pleasant
Here," thought the Sea Hag. "If this is all we need fear from
spinach
Then I don't mind so much. Perhaps we could invite Alice the Goon
over"—she scratched
One dug pensively—"but Wimpy is such a country
Bumpkin, always burping like that." Minute at first, the thunder
Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder,
The color of spinach. Popeye chuckled and scratched
His balls: it sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country.

Far from the Rappahannock, the silent
Danube moves along toward the sea.
The brown and green Nile rolls slowly
Like the Niagara's welling descent.
Tractors stood on the green banks of the Loire
Near where it joined the Cher.
The St. Lawrence prods among black stones
And mud. But the Arno is all stones.
Wind